The FCB Quadrant and PIM

The FCB quadrant emerged from the US agency Foote, Cone and Belding (FCB) in the 1970s. It was meant to support direct advertising’s creative strategy as it clarifies how consumers approach the buying process for different products. The diagram below visualizes the two levels of consumer involvement, namely, the extent of thinking (rational and functional considerations) versus feeling (emotions) in the consumer’s decision-making.

What’s all this to do with PIM?
Marketers and Sales responsible to launch product campaigns, equipped with the FCB model, will generally tap into analyses of consumer–product relationships and develop appropriate promotional strategies. Ideally, they have PIM processes and tools in place to source the relevant product information, enrich it, and publish it to targeted consumer’s touch points. The enrichment phase is crucial here. A (proper) PIM would offer capabilities to enhance and/or add further relevant information to products to make them commercially palatable. 

Classifications, attributes, pictures, videos, documents, are all elements that would be part of the enrichment phase. This would give marketers and merchandise teams the opportunity to enrich products following the FCB grid. To illustrate: if a campaign or a catalog is out to sell products where a whole lot of information is required (the ‘thinking’ dimension), the PIM will allow teams to enrich product data accordingly. Similarly, if more emotional involvement is required, the PIM provides a platform where all the media partners e.g. agencies would collaboratively contribute to satisfy the ‘emotional’ requirement.  Typically, retailers end up with hybrid scenarios.

Zappos is a great example. They sell shoes which fall, at first blush, in the ‘thinking’ category. To sell shoes online you have to provide a whole lot of information such as videos, pictures, details about size, and size conversion, etc. At the end of the day, you have to approximate a tactile experience. The greatness of Zappos, however, lies in its ability to create an emotional relation with the brand and not with shoes. A very interesting way to fulfill the ‘emotional’ dimension.

Another great example is DITTO. They sell glasses and the amount of visual information needed to give consumers a tactile sense (in this case to see how the product fits) is exorbitant. And relevant given that they ask the permission to capture your face at very beginning of the process in order to ensure you choose the right pair of glasses.

In all these cases, PIM can really be your differentiator. It enables marketing and sales to sell better, by providing the relevant information based on customers, product type, channels, etc. and faster, given that shoppers base their decisions on the clear and relevant information associated with products (including reviews, and recommendation).